vSphere is the flagship suit of Server virtualization, cloud deployment, and management. VMware vSphere comes with features that help you prepare a robust foundation to build virtual environments. You might have an already-built vSphere deployment, but managing the resources of your vSphere environment is crucial in order to save time and improve productivity.

This practical guide provides readers with a high-level understanding of the various components, methodologies and general best practices for maintaining and managing resources in a virtual environment.

Readers will begin the book with an explanation of the requirements for ESXi, the groundwork for VMware vSphere, and move through a comprehensive study of how resources are supplied. We’ll then progress with showing you the characteristics that enable resource and virtual machine availability.

With a solid understanding of the requirements to build and run your environment, you then move on to understanding how ESXi manages resources such as CPU, memory, disk, and networks for multiple virtual machines and how it ensures resource availability. Finally, you will be made aware of the options available with Vmware vSphere to automate and monitor your environment.

Readers will go through a learning curve of understanding the components, identifying the course of action, and putting it to practice. Check out the sample chapter here.

Who this book is for?

If you are a vSphere administrator who wants to understand new features or an administrator aspiring to start your virtualization journey with VMware vSphere and want to learn how to manage your resources, this book is for you. Readers are expected to have some prior knowledge of virtualization technology.

What people are saying

This book is a great resource for users getting started with vSphere and trying to understand the principles of resource management in shared computing environments. Virtualization on vSphere introduces lots of new concepts and this book does a great job explaining those concepts, required licensing and specific vSphere features. It is a must read for beginners, small deployment administrators and admins with growing deployments of vSphere.

The book isn’t very long to read as it only has 4 chapters, but I liked the format where the author present a feature and right after he gives you an examples with screenshots how-to use it in real life! This is not simple theoretical or technical guide, but Jonathan shares his experience and tips that he has learnt so far with vSphere so it’s very valuable.
-See more at: http://www.vladan.fr/vmware-vsphere-management-essentials-book-review/

I’ve been using the vCenter Server Appliance, AKA VCSA, in testing for several months now and ready to start using it for every day use. These are the installation steps to get a fresh vCenter Server Appliance installed using the embedded PostgreSQL database and Active Directory for SSO.

This post will walk through mounting an ESXi ISO via the UCS KVM and installing ESXi. It assumes that UCS Manager is configured properly with the necessary profiles, policies and pools, that all VLANs and uplinks have been properly configured and that storage switches and arrays have been properly zoned. You should also verify the hardware and firmware version to download the correct drivers and build a custom ESXi ISO using PowerCLI if one does not already exist.

Launch the Cisco UCS Manager; if it was not already installed/launched navigate to the IP/URL of your UCS manager (ex https://10.10.10.10) and click the Launch UCS Manager button, a jnlp file will be downloaded, launch that file which will load the UCS Manager and login window.

Once logged in, you will see your equipment tab. Expand Chassis, Chassis 1 and then Servers.

Click on the server you want to install ESXi on and click on the KVM Console action item. A separate java application will launch. If prompted about an unencryted KVM session, select Accept for this session, and remember, then Apply.

Click on the Virtual Media tab (accept again if prompted), click on Add image... and browse to your ISO directory, select the ISO and click the Mapped checkbox

Power on the server, or if already booted click Reset (Click OK, Power Cycle, OK, OK)

The UCS blades take several minutes to do checks, do not worry at this point.

When the Cisco splash screen appears, press F6

When the boot menu appears, select EFI: Cisco vKVM-Mapped vDVD and hit enter. The KVM needs to read the ISO, depending on the connection between your ISO directory and KVM, this will take a few moments.

You will now see the ESXi installer start to load. From here, proceed with a normal ESXi installation.